Paul
Goble
Staunton, September 29 – The Russian
Duma has declared that Kyiv’s decision to make Ukrainian the language of instruction
in Ukrainian schools is “’an act of ethnocide’ of the ethnic Russian people in
Ukraine, thus denouncing in another what Moscow is itself doing in Russia and
ignoring who is really responsible for the shift away from Russian ethnic
identity in Ukraine.
In a Kasparov.ru commentary, Russian
analyst Igor Yakovenko notes that “ethnocide is the policy of the intentional
destruction of national identity and the self-consciousness of a people” that
can be achieved either by genocide or by forced assimilation into another human
community (kasparov.ru/material.php?id=59CD203BD5D3A).
There is no
genocide of ethnic Russians going on in Ukraine except in the fevered
imaginations of some Russian commentators, Yakovenko says; but there is
assimilation of ethnic Russians into the Ukrainian nation – but not as a result
of Kyiv’s policies but rather because of the actions and statement of the
Russian government.
In Soviet times, the share of ethnic
Russians in the Ukrainian population rose from 9.23 percent in 1926 to 22.07
percent in 1989, the result of the mass murder of the Ukrainian peasantry by
Stalin and the Moscow-organized in-migration of ethnic Russians and Moscow’s encouragement
of Russian as opposed to Ukrainian identity.
The next Ukrainian census is
scheduled for 2020 and it will show a precipitous decline in the share of
ethnic Russians in the population, Yakovenko says. A recent survey found that
only six percent of the citizens of Ukraine now say they are ethnic Russians.
The figure in 2020 will likely be even lower.
Most ethnic Russians in Ukraine are
characterized by “bi-ethnicity,” the Russian analyst says. That is, people who
hold this identity view themselves as part of two peoples simultaneously –
Russians and Ukrainians. But now if they
have to choose, almost all of these people will choose to identify as
Ukrainians.
According to Yakovenko, “the process
of the sharp reduction of the share of people who consider themselves ethnic Russians
is occurring in all post-Soviet republics except perhaps Belarus.” In Ukraine, he says, “this process is occurring
in a more troubled and more intensive manner.”
More troubled because of the ethnic
closeness of the Ukrainian and Russian peoples, and more intensively “above all”
because of the war that Russian has unleashed against Ukraine. But it is not connected only with the war,
Yakovenko says. It also reflects the hatred of Ukraine spewed out by Russian
media outlets which still reach many people in Ukraine.
As a result, “to be an ethnic Russian
in Ukraine is becoming a problem,” the analyst says.
It is not just a problem of how
others view ethnic Russians in Ukraine, he argues; it is also a problem of
self-consciousness, of how ethnic Russians in Ukraine see themselves. They do
not see themselves as Moscow TV commentators insist they should, and they are
choosing to be Ukrainians even though under different circumstances they might
have chosen otherwise.
“If it weren’t for the war, the
political talk shows, and a number of other broadcasts of Russian television,”
ethnic Russians in Ukraine wouldn’t be confronted with a choice. But when they
hear what those who are invading their country say, they make the only reasonable
choice and become Ukrainians.
Thus, Yakovenko says, “an ethnocide
of the Russian people in Ukraine is really occurring. Russia by its military
actions and its television broadcasts is intentionally carrying it out.” That
Moscow should blame Kyiv for what the Russian authorities are doing is only yet
another confirmation of that reality.
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